A Good Place to Live

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

For three years, Pindell Making Tracks: An American Rail Odyssey traversed North America, visiting several mostly small cities he views as good places to live. His report, he says, is ``surprisingly good news,'' and it also makes good reading for both questers and those merely wondering about what makes for ``place'' in the '90s. In Santa Fe, his first stop, he fine-tuned his criteria, which are different from the standard tables of schools, taxes and crime: they include walkability, the presence of ``third places'' like coffee houses, a mix of cultural and natural amenities and a sense of local identity. Pindell's curiosity and engaging style, combined with reflections on his native New Hampshire, overcome the occasional superficiality of his reports. In San Luis Obispo, midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, he finds a unique chamber of commerce devoted to preservation ``not only of lands but of buildings,'' while in Bellingham, Wash., he sees the only Seattle suburb surviving the Long Islandization of the region. He discovers pockets of cosmopolitanism in writerly Missoula, Mont., and Wilmington, N.C., a filmmaking center. While Ithaca, N.Y., seems a fractured town, Burlington, Vt., is the most civil place he's visited. He concludes by assessing the preconditions for livable cities and reflecting that the voices of urban critics like Jane Jacobs and Howard Mumford, who stressed that cityscapes should provide mixed-use zoning and downtown living, still echo. July

Mary Carroll

" The search for a good place to live in a land where such places are perceived as increasingly rare" is Pindell's "last migration." The author, who celebrated railway travel in two previous books, spent three years exploring places on most searchers' shortlists: Santa Fe, New Mexico; San Luis Obispo and Napa in California; Oregon's Willamette Valley, southern British Columbia, and Puget Sound in the Northwest; Missoula, Montana; Minnesota's Twin Cities; and so on. Key to the appeal of these small cities are community gathering places, residential areas near the city's center, a balanced mix of natural and cultural amenities, and a strong sense of place. Following classical urbanists like William Whyte, Jane Jacobs, and Lewis Mumford often called "Howard" here!, and recent studies like Tony Hiss' "Experience of Place" 1990 and James Howard Kunstler's "Geography of Nowhere" 1993, Pindell sees escaping dependence on the automobile as a central objective for "renaissance towns." His epilogue spells out what other small cities can do to generate their own renaissance and become "good places to live."

Booknews

Gleaned from his research based on travels around the country, the author provides a detailed description of 16 of his favorite cities and towns with a healthy sense of community. The book emphasizes such features as communal gathering places, natural and cultural amenities, and a strong, sometimes idiosyncratic, sense of place. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)